I need to change something!
MFXers who make up the Business Design Group offer services that create new ways to think about your team, organization or product. Sometimes clients hire us to help them with wicked problems; complex, ambiguous challenges they’re just not sure where or how to begin. Other times, the Business Design Group works with clients to set a foundation for the year with Visual Strategy Planning, or assessment of a team’s creativity.
In the end, the Business Design Group is working with people who need to change something. Set a new course, establish a high-performing innovation team or solve that big fuzzy problem.
Culture Assessment
Machteld Faas Xander believes that understanding your core organizational values is the first step to opening up a team and understanding how you do things. MFXers use a method that focuses values around 12 different well-known archetypes. These easily identifiable characters provide an accessible way to talk about organizational values, imagine alternative ways of organizing and enable the creation of meaningful team values that drive performance.
Creative Climate Assessment
At MFX, we understand that effective team work is the core element required for group creativity. That’s why we use our Creative Climate Assessment to examine how people work together. Your team environment is made up of various behaviours and language, both are easy to change or adjust quickly. Understanding how your team works together and how you can change the behaviours and language within is a critical first step towards creating a team of individuals who can work together to solve complex business problems.
Creative Problem Solving
Intense periods of guided creative problem solving can help groups have major breakthroughs, fast. This service works as a 1-, 2- or 3-day set of workshops that take a group through a process of opening a problem and breaking it into manageable pieces. The group then spends time exploring and expanding the problem they’ve unpacked. Finally, decisions are made and the problem is closed. We have different models for picking a solution and there is emphasis on Visual Action Planning (see below) to end the session.
Creative Strategy Planning
MFX has helped many organizations maximize their creative potential in a strategic context. We start by taking them out of their comfort zone and opening their minds to thinking, communicating and creating in different ways, by challenging the myth that strategizing has to be a purely analytical discipline. By combining analytic and creative thinking, ideas burst forth, and plans are planted and nurtured into possibility.
This is a visual planning tool. Creating a canvas is a fantastic way to relay abstract thoughts, especially if you’re trying to sell an idea or generate more ideas from a larger group. Culture Canvas works as a visual design tool, because it adds weight to the thoughts and ideas contributed by the team.
Culture Canvas was created by Machteld Faas Xander to help design sustainable communities. The tool helps us focus on the interactions between people, and it helps us keep the whole complex system in a single view. We’ve come to understand that communication and layers of engagement are critical to keeping participants involved and contributing.
Visual Strategic Planning
Using a consensus method for brainstorming and developing strategic plans brings a team together. We put an emphasis on the visual aspect of this because we find that groups who are able to see the whole picture are better able to work through the complexity often required. Visual Strategic Plans celebrate the unique perspectives different team members have, they clarify larger systems, and they change the way people make connections between very diverse or opposing ideas through a clustering process. Visual Strategic Plans are closed with our Action Planning workshop.
Action Planning
Planning for the next 5-years can set a company up for a long stretch with a lot of unforeseen change. That’s why we like to focus teams or organizations on shorter, intense planning periods. Action Planning emphasizes what can be accomplished within 6 to 9 months, and allows for checking back into a larger plan at pre-determined milestones. Our Action Planning method encourages organizations or teams to have dedicated wall space within their environment to keep a visual reminder of what they’re trying to accomplish, as well as weekly touch points to stay engaged. It’s tough getting things done; making it visual and putting it on the wall is one method for overcoming that challenge.
Organizational Branding
Branding is confusing and misunderstood. Most people know that your brand is more than just a logo. The trouble with that is that most people still don’t really understand what “more” entails. Organizational Branding is a collection of services within Business Design Group, and is complemented by Brand Identity work done through our Communication Design Group.
Organizational Branding is about understanding the foundation of your organization; how it works, what core values drive decisions, how you shape every part of your organization. We begin with the research phase and our Culture Assessment continues with customer and key stakeholder interviews. A review of all communication materials (both internal and external) is also done. This leads to a Visual Strategic Planning session to co-design a consensus driven vision and values for the organization. Coupled with the other research, we complete this process with a detailed Brand Platform, which will provide recommendations for areas within the organization to “live the brand”.
The next phase of a full branding project is to move into Brand Identity.
Innovation Teams
Change occurs when a solid foundation is put into place to allow a Culture of Innovation and creativity to grow. By working with a small team, MFX can help your organization establish a high-performing, creative team. Innovation Teams is a collection of the services above. Once the team is formed, we begin with our Visual Language workshops. This provides a basic skill-set required for better communication and creative work. Next the team goes through a Creative Climate Assessment to better understand the 9 dimensions of creativity and how we can focus on certain aspects to make their environment more creative. Finally, we work through a Creative Problem Solving workshop to get the team working together and solving a problem. Making lasting change takes time, however these sessions and skills are meant to provide a common language and understanding of creativity-resulting in a more effective team.